Ford has said that it will cut 1,300 jobs in the United Kingdom over the next two years. This is a fifth of the total number of jobs the company has in the country.
It’s part of a big plan to reorganize the company, which will lead to the loss of 3,800 jobs across Europe.
Ford is cutting back on the number of people working on research and development because the economy is uncertain, and the company is getting ready for the switch to electric cars.
Most of the cuts in the UK will be at the company’s research site in Dunton, Essex.
Sites all over the country are also likely to lose several hundred back-office jobs. But factories in Halewood, Dagenham, and Daventry will continue to work as usual.
Less than two years have passed since Ford closed its engine plant in Bridgend.
Tim Slatter, chairman of Ford of Britain, said, “The economy in Europe is pretty bad, and we don’t know what the future holds.”
“High inflation, rising interest rates, the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, rising energy prices, and so on”
But he said that wasn’t the only thing going on. Ford of Europe is getting ready for a big change in how it does business.
It plans for all of the cars it makes in the area to be fully electric by 2030.
By the same date, two out of every three commercial vehicles will be electric or plug-in hybrids.
At the same time, it will try to stop being thought of as a mass-market provider of cheap, everyday transportation.
Instead, it wants to make a smaller number of more unique cars that use brand names to their advantage, like the Mustang Mach-E and the F-150 Lightning electric pickup truck.
It also wants to put more attention on its line of commercial cars, especially the Transit.
The Mondeo has already stopped being made. In June, in Cologne, Germany, the last Fiesta will be made.
The once-popular runabout is no longer thought to be worth making, and there will be no direct replacement. Most people think that the name “Fiesta” will soon be forgotten.
But making new electric cars is an expensive process. Over the next few years, Ford plans to spend about $50 billion (£41 billion) on this.
As part of this strategy, it has allocated £380 million to convert its gearbox factory in Halewood, Merseyside, into a facility that can produce hundreds of thousands of electric motors annually.
Ford thinks that as the development of traditional gasoline and diesel cars slows down, it will need fewer people to work on new products. This is because electric cars are pretty simple mechanically, even though they have complex software.
So it thinks this is an area where it can save money. Europe will lose 2,800 engineering jobs, most of which are in the UK and Germany.
These are hard decisions that are not made lightly,” Ford’s European electric car manager Martin Sander stated.
“We know how much uncertainty it causes for our team, and I want them to know that we will be there for them in the months to come.”
